About seven years ago, Jennifer Counter was a single mom looking to supplement her teacher salary. She began tutoring one elementary student in-home, and within two years she expanded to 20 students. Today, the Katy-area businesswoman runs Counter’s Tutoring Connection full time with about 100 students, 37 tutors and a business manager, she said. In the next year, she hopes to relocate from Kingsland Boulevard to a larger space, and over the next decade, she aims to open five more locations in the Greater Houston area. “I’ve always had an entrepreneurial spirit,” Counter said. “A lot of people thought I was crazy leaving my stable job in teaching. But I had worked in the business world, and I have a lot of business sense naturally.” Counter said she switched from a corporate job to education because she did not feel fulfilled and spent a lot of time away from her daughter. “I needed to find something where I could align passion and purpose together,” she said. CTC offers personalized, one-on-one subject matter help as well as test prep, language tutoring and special education-focused tutoring, she said. Students range from preschoolers to adults. Counter added she only hires tutors who are passionate about student learning and want to make a difference. Thirty CTC tutors are certified teachers. “We want [students] to be excited about learning, and we want them to get to a place where they feel really comfortable in their own abilities,”  she said. To inspire learning, CTC focuses on establishing relationships and creating connections among the students, parents and tutors, Counter said. “We live our life in relationships,” she said. “Always, my first goal as a teacher in the classroom was building a relationship with my students—we had to have that connection. I knew that once I did that and we had that right, the sky was the limit. That’s what I wanted to bring into the center.”

Counter’s Tutoring Connection

24662 Kingsland Blvd., Katy 832-341-6621 www.counterstutoring.com Hours: Mon.-Fri. 3-8:30 p.m.; Sat. 8 a.m.-1 p.m.; closed Sun.